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New Orleans Winning NBA Draft Lottery Brings Back Memories of When Franchise Played in Johnson City
It happened nine years ago. It seems longer.
The New Orleans Pelicans winning the NBA Draft Lottery, or Zion Williamson Sweepstakes as the case may be, brought back memories of a less desirable time for ETSU athletics.
Nine years ago the Pelicans, then still going by the nickname their original Charlotte-based nickname Hornets (a reference to British commander Lord Cornwell’s comment Mecklenburg County, North Carolina was “a hornet’s nest of resistance” during the Revolutionary War and therefore sounding as out of place with New Orleans as Jazz does with Utah and Lakers does with Los Angeles) played an exhibition game in Johnson City.
George Shinn, who would have been universally identified as the NBA’s worst owner had it not been for Donald Sterling, was living in Telford, Tennessee. East Tennessee State thought his money would look nice in their coffers.
So, then-ETSU President Paul Stanton and athletic director David Mullins, who had dropped the Buccaneers’ football program seven years before and had failed to revive it in 2007, got in to bed with Shinn, so to speak.
Never mind Shinn’s sexual assault trial with charges that included kidnapping. Never mind the fact Shinn…
